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Frank Chen's black bike helmet was adorned with stickers. It already had nicks and scrapes, but none of them compared to the damage done to it on Sept. 24, when the 13-year-old was dragged by a car that struck him while he was riding his bike.
The back of the helmet is scarred and torn from the heat and impact of the accident, but the helmet is still in one functional piece.
And—more importantly—so is Frank's head.
"I don't think it's a stretch to say the helmet saved his life," said neighborhood resource officer Dean Discher. "What would have happened to his head on that first hit on the ground, or with that scraping?"
On Oct. 13, the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety honored four automotive shop workers—Vince Lozano, Troy Cummings, Paul Hensley and Ruben De La Cruz—for rescuing Frank from under the car. They used jacks to lift the car off him to get him out.
The accident occurred just eight days after the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety put on a public display of traffic law enforcement, giving tickets to students who were riding bikes, skates and scooters without wearing helmets.
In May, Frank was one of the students ticketed for not wearing a helmet. He told officers after the accident that it was because of that ticket that he was wearing his helmet on Sept. 24.
If Sunnyvale minors are stopped for not wearing a helmet, they must attend a juvenile traffic diversion course with at least one of their parents. Discher said he used Frank's helmet in the September class, and it got people's attention better than any lecture. He said enough tickets are given out each month that there are usually 25 students in each class. He said Frank was scheduled to come to the Oct. 26 class.
"I can talk as much as I want, but it's better to have something real like that, with a real story behind it," Discher said.
He said the ticketing and the education have helped Sunnyvale handle a problem that he says is prevalent throughout the area.
"If you drive around our city, you really do see kids wearing their helmets," Discher said. "It could be better, and that's what we're shooting for, but I think the citations we give and the classes we run are making a difference."
In his role as a neighborhood resource officer, Discher oversees eight schools in Sunnyvale, spending most of his time at Peterson Middle School. He says that on a given day on that campus, it is rare to find a student without a helmet, although he says helmet use varies all over Sunnyvale.
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Photograph courtesy of the city of Sunnyvale